Stephen Warne on professional negligence, regulation and discipline around the world

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Entries Tagged as 'concurrent duties'

Issac's holiday; plea bargaining in disciplinary charges examined

October 10th, 2008 · No Comments

Issac's style of legal letter writing is legendary. There are some quite extensive private collections out there. I recall one letter said to have been penned by the man himself which began 'Dear Sir, you are a petulant lunatic,' and after some substantive words continued 'You are a very small cog in a very big [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Fiduciary duties · Misconduct · Practising certificates · Trust money · concurrent duties · conflicts · procedure

Application by appellant to remove respondent's trial counsel from appeal dismissed

February 5th, 2008 · No Comments

In Chen v Chan [2008] VSCA 2, President Maxwell and Justice of Appeal Redlich dismissed an application by the appellant for an order enjoining the respondent's solicitor and counsel from acting in the appeal. The applicant alleged that there had been wrongdoing by the respondent's lawyers at the trial. In fact that was [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Ethics · Professional regulation · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and interest · duty to court · litigation ethics

A non-exhaustive bibliography on lawyers' conflicts of duties between insurer and insured

October 28th, 2007 · No Comments

Speaking, as I was in the last post, about AILA's Geoff Masel lecture series, here is the 2006 lecture, delivered by Tony Scotford of Ebsworth & Ebsworth's Sydney office. It is yet another contribution to the much talked about but little done about problem of insurer-appointed defence lawyers in liability claims and their potentially [...]

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Tags: Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty

Solicitors' liability paper; conflicts of lawyers acting for insurer and insured

August 8th, 2007 · No Comments

Here's a link to a little article on the law relating to the possible conflicts of duties faced by a lawyer retained by a liability insurer to act for its insured in the defence of proceedings against the insured. It discusses 3 English cases:

Brown v Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance;
TSB Bank v Robert Irvin; and
Zurich Professional [...]

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Tags: Ethics · Negligence · concurrent duties · conflicts · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty

Freshfields partner gets whacked $140,000 over conflict of duties to concurrent clients

August 8th, 2007 · No Comments

Freshfields used to be Marks & Spencer's go-to lawyers. Then they fell out of favour a bit. But they were still acting for Marks 'n' Sparks on one relatively small contract. A key partner then decided to accept instructions to act for a consortium trying to take over the supermarket chain. If the takeover [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty

The incapacitated client

July 18th, 2007 · 1 Comment

Here's an interesting case about lawyers, incapacitated clients, paternalism, and the right to be represented. An Alzheimers affected woman hired a beak to oppose a guardianship application brought by her brother. The court appointed another lawyer to act for her, suspecting that the man she professed to want to marry had in fact [...]

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Tags: Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty · mental illness

Chinese wall holds up at investment bank

July 16th, 2007 · No Comments

Update, 13 November: Clayton Utz's take on the case here.
Here's a long Sydney Morning Herald article about the latest big Chinese wall case, this time not in the context of a law firm, but of Citigroup, an investment bank. Here's The Age's shorter version. The case is ASIC v Citigroup Global Markets Australia [...]

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Tags: Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty · duty and interest · prosecutorial failures

Updates: big words, Texan legal writing, conflicts of duties

May 27th, 2007 · No Comments

In my post "Judge uses big word", I commented on President Mason's use of "tergiversation". Now David Starkoff at Inchoate has noted another's analysis of the odds of each of the High Court judges other than Justice Kirby being responsible for the appearance of "epexegetical" (which seems to mean "explanatory in a way [...]

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Tags: Ethics · Fiduciary duties · Judges · Legal writing · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty · duty and interest · interest of associate

The American version of the Briginshaw standard of proof

May 20th, 2007 · No Comments

In a stinging dissent against the conclusion of a majority of the Supreme Court of Washington that a lawyer had breached a conflict of duties rule in representing multiple parties, one judge set out what sounds a lot like the US version of the Briginshaw standard of proof which prevails in Australian and English disciplinary [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Ethics · Sharing receipts with non-lawyers · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and duty · litigation ethics

No absolute bar in England to representing and opposing same client in two different matters

March 18th, 2007 · No Comments

Goubran shares my view that a solicitor can act for and against the one man at the same time. Just not in relation to the same thing. In fact, there is a degree of relation which makes it impermissible, and Goubran sets out the practically meaningless judicial utterances on the test for the requisite degree [...]

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Tags: Ethics · Fiduciary duties · Uncategorized · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty